Say what you will against Duterte, but he has a point. How many times has this so-called court of international justice ruled against any European nation, which include some of the worse culprits when it comes to war crimes? How often has it criticized the USA for its bloody imperialistic attacks on the world? And what about Israel? The hypocrisy is nauseating.

“The court was created by an EU-sponsored treaty, the Rome Statute. The president claimed that the court was created as a means for Europe to atone “for their sins.”

Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has called on more countries to follow his lead and withdraw from the treaty underpinning the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The firebrand strongman described the treaty as “bull” during an address at a graduation ceremony for army cadets, according to Rappler. “The treaty, if you read it, it’s all bull…,” Duterte said, seemingly stopping short of using the word ‘bullsh*t’. Later he joked about his colourful use of language. “I’ll just say ‘volleyball’ so there’s no issue,” he said.

Duterte vowed to convince others to withdraw from the treaty. The court was created by an EU-sponsored treaty, the Rome Statute. The president claimed that the court was created as a means for Europe to atone “for their sins,”according to the Inquirer. He further claimed that the Rome Statute is “clearly a criminal law.”

Duterte withdrew his nation from the ICC last week following, what he called, “outrageous” attacks by UN officials. The court announced last month that it was opening a preliminary investigation into the tactics and alleged abuses during the country’s war on drugs. The crackdown has reportedly left thousands of people dead since it began in 2016.

Duterte has promised to reject all findings made by the ICC. “They cannot ever, ever hope to acquire jurisdiction over my person,” he added.

Authorities in the south-east Asian country claim that around 4,000 people have been killed as a result of the 19-month crackdown. Human rights groups dispute this figure, however. The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) estimates that up to 12,000 people have been killed in the brutal campaign.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A decision of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to pull his country out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will encourage other states to follow the suit, marking “the beginning of the end” for the ICC, the spokesman of Duterte, Harry Roque, said Thursday.

“The Philippine withdrawal, I am sure, will start an avalanche of other states leaving the court… Secondly, no other Asians would join the ICC now. Only the Philippines has taken the role of advocating that other countries in the region should become a member. This [is] the beginning of the end of the court,” Roque was quoted as saying by the ABS-CBN News.

The large-scale anti-drug campaign was launched by Duterte in June 2016 as a follow-up to his election promise to stop drug-related crimes in the country.

According to the Human Rights Watch, the so-called War on Drugs has resulted in the killing of over 12,000 drug suspects. Duterte’s campaign has been sharply criticized by the international community and human rights groups.Duterte announced the day before his country’s withdrawal of the ratification of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, after the court in February launched a preliminary inquiry into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Philippine leader. Duterte was reportedly dissatisfied with an “attempt” by the ICC to place him under the court’s jurisdiction.

The mayor of Baltimore is receiving much-deserved criticism after she allocated $100,000 to bus students to a gun control rally in Washington D.C. later this month. The reason for the criticism is founded in the fact that students froze all winter long because the mayor says they have no money to fix the slew of broken heaters.

Earlier this year, students in Baltimore schools were told to bring blankets and cold weather attire to class every day because the heating systems in over one-third of all the schools were either broken or barely working. Students, faculty, and staff were forced to bundle up inside the school in January until it became so unbearable that the schools actually closed due to unsafe temperatures.

To most people, these underperforming, outdated, and broken heating systems would be a priority to get fixed. However, at the time, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh claimed that there simply wasn’t enough money to make the repairs and upgrades.

It is not just the heat either. The infrastructure in the Baltimore school system is crumbling and many students find themselves unable to even drink the water. But we see where the priorities lie.

Fast forward to March, and suddenly—in spite of claiming they have no money—the mayor has miraculously pulled $100,000 out of nowhere to bus thousands of students to a gun control rally in Washington D.C.

“America needs to hear the voices of the young people of Baltimore,” Pugh told the students before announcing the city’s plan to fund the trip to the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C., on March 24.

The $100,000 will pay for 60 buses, free t-shirts, boxed lunches and other amenities for a few thousand students who signed up to go to the rally.

While $100,000 isn’t nearly enough to fix the heating systems, it shows that basic necessities for students are taking a backseat to political theater.

As Our Community Now reports, at the time, the mayor’s office explained that the schools’ heating systems were beyond fixing because the city simply didn’t have the money to make the repairs and upgrades. Initial estimates from the American Civil Liberties Union (it’s never good when HVAC systems in schools get the attention of the ACLU) estimated that it would cost at least $2.8 billion to modernize the heating and air conditioning in Baltimore City Public Schools.

The problem became so bad that earlier this year, citizens were forced to take action outside of the government. A concerned citizen then set up a GoFundMe account to raise money to fix the problem. It was titled, “We Need Heat in Our Public Schools,” and it raised over $84,000 to provide space heaters. The mayor’s $100,000 could’ve stretched that out to further reduce suffering in schools but this did not happen.

Parents and students alike are left wondering why the mayor would justify spending upwards of $100,000 on political activism when children are suffering every single day in school.

It is no secret that Baltimore is one of the worst places in the nation as far as gun violence is concerned. And, if students want to voice their concern over this problem, they have every single right to do so. However, when the mayor spends money they don’t have to bus a few thousand students to DC for a day to call for gun control when Baltimore is already highly regulated, this speaks to the nature of such an act.

In Baltimore, there is already an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and special fingerprinting and reporting requirements on handgun sales. Yet their murder rate more than doubles other cities that are much larger—like Chicago.

According to WJZ, murders occur so frequently in Baltimore that the number of murders in the city is higher than the number in Philadelphia, even though Philadelphia “has two and a half times the population.” Moreover, Baltimore sees more murders than New York City, although NYC “is almost 14 times larger.”

Yes, Baltimore has a problem but all the gun control in the world is doing very little to stop guns from coming in. Even the police admit that after all the guns were banned in 2013, criminal use of banned guns skyrocketed every year after.

Proving that if you disarm a population, only criminals and cops will have guns, Baltimore Police spokesman T.J. Smith said, “We’re dealing with absolute criminals who want as much weaponry as possible when they’re going after their targets. They’re not carrying .22s. They’re carrying the big guns that have these high capacities.”

Sadly, the mayor’s move to spend $100,000 of taxpayer money that they don’t have to send students to call for gun control that won’t work is the epitome of everything wrong with government in America.

Until politicians educate themselves on the cause of this violence, these uninformed and corrupt lawmakers will continue to focus on controlling the symptoms.

According to reports from Sputnik International, the Syrian Army has claimed that it has uncovered a chemical weapons “workshop” in East Ghouta after having liberated the territory where the workshop was located.

After sweeping through the village of Aftris in Eastern Ghouta following the withdrawal of terrorists from the area, Syrian Army Colonel Feruz Ibrahim told reporters that, “Presumably, the equipment of these munitions could be produced as part of a false flag accusation that government troops used chemical weapons.”

In other works, Ibrahim is echoing what many independent researchers have known for some time, i.e. that Western-backed terrorists have the ability and the desire to conduct false flag attacks to be blamed on the Syrian government for the purpose of justifying military action or airstrikes against the Syrian military by the United States and NATO.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry recently stated that militants inside East Ghouta may be preparing to stage a chemical attack in order to place blame on the Syrian government. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Mekdad assured the press that Damascus was ready and willing to assist in investigations related to chemical attacks in Syria, but pointed out that various “international organizations” did not want to cooperate with the Syrian government.

Only a week ago, the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation also reported the possibility that terrorists were planning to stage chemical weapons attacks in East Ghouta in order to blame the Syrian government.

Although impossible to determine for sure, it seems that the willingness of the Russian government to uncover and announce plans of terrorists to stage chemical attacks may be foiling many of the attempts of the U.S. to take advantage of these false flags, at least on the world stage.

The OPCW has already confirmed that the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile has been destroyed. Even U.S. officials have had to admit that there has been no evidence of use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in East Ghouta, with Defense Secretary James Mattis admitting that there was no evidence that the Syrian used chemical weapons in Khan Sheykhoun, despite the U.S. having launched a series of airstrikes against the al-Sha’aryat airbase, killing around 80, including civilians and children.

Although about thirty countries have the death penalty for drug trafficking, only in China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Vietnam are drug offenders routinely executed. Yet, the worst place to be caught drug trafficking is in the Philippines, where thousands have died in extra-judicial killings.

In the United States, not only can some drug offenses result in life in prison, “the sentence of death can be carried out on a defendant who has been found guilty of manufacturing, importing or distributing a controlled substance if the act was committed as part of a continuing criminal enterprise.”

President Trump has said some outrageous things. He has said some dumb things. And he has said some outrageously dumb things. But talking about the death penalty for drug dealers is one of the most outrageously dumb things he has ever said.

It was revealed last year that Trump said during a phone call with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”

Then it was reported that Trump has privately told a number of people that he supports executing drug dealers.

And just the other day, speaking at a White House summit on the opioid epidemic, Trump said this:

Some countries have a very, very tough penalty. The ultimate penalty. And by the way they have much less of a drug problem than we do. So we’re going to have to be very strong on penalties.

We have pushers and we have drug dealers that kill hundreds and hundreds of people and most of them don’t even go to jail. If you shoot one person, they give you life, they give you the death penalty. These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people and nothing happens to them.

But Trump is not alone. Newt Gingrich has likewise entertained the same despicable idea.

Trump, Gingrich, and the hardcore conservative drug warriors who would support the death penalty for drug traffickers have their sights on the wrong target. Alcohol and tobacco dealers cause much more harm and kill far more people with their products.

Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.

Learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor school performance.

Mental health problems, including depression and anxiety.

Social problems, including lost productivity, family problems, and unemployment.

Alcohol dependence, or alcoholism.

For pregnant women, no amount of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is known to be safe:

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is associated with spontaneous abortions, birth defects, and developmental disorders, many of which occur early in gestation before the woman is aware that she is pregnant. Alcohol use during pregnancy is associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), which may be characterized by specific physical features, impaired growth and abnormal development or functioning of the central nervous system.

Smoking also increases the risk of dying from cancer and other diseases in cancer patients and survivors.

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and affects a person’s overall health.

Smoking can make it harder for a woman to become pregnant.

Smoking can affect bone health.

Smoking affects the health of your teeth and gums and can cause tooth loss.

Smoking can increase your risk for cataracts and macular degeneration.

Smoking is a cause of type 2 diabetes mellitus and can make it harder to control.

Smoking causes general adverse effects on the body, including inflammation and decreased immune function.

Smoking is a cause of rheumatoid arthritis.

If the government should execute drug dealers, then why should it not also execute alcohol and tobacco dealers? Why not destroy distilleries, breweries, and wineries and execute their workers? Why not round up the owners of, and clerks at, grocery stores, convenience stores, and liquor stores and execute them for causing the deaths of thousands of people?

Seems rather ludicrous to single out drug dealers, doesn’t it?

So, what should the government do about the health problems resulting from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs? What should the government do about binge drinking, chain smoking, and drug abuse?

Absolutely nothing.

Although libertarians certainly recognize the potential negative effects of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use on the user’s health, safety, well-being, finances, family, job, reputation, etc., they don’t believe it is the responsibility of government to provide solutions to any problems resulting from the use of these substances. And certainly not solutions that criminalize the use of substances the government doesn’t approve of. Better solutions are to be found in family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, anti-alcohol, anti-tobacco, and anti-drug organizations, religion, churches, ministers, rescue missions, Alcoholics Anonymous-type programs, and treatment centers.

Ultimately, the users of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are responsible for their own choices and actions.

A sheriff’s deputy who was arrested on child neglect and drug possession charges was formerly named the “Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.”

Brevard County, FL – The same police officer who was awarded for his exceptional conduct on the job, was recently arrested on a number charges including child neglect and drug possession after neighbors reported hearing gunshots from his house.

Nicholas Worthy was named the top sheriff’s deputy in Brevard County in 2015, and he was named “Law Enforcement Officer of the Year” by the Florida Sheriffs Association in 2016. He was also awarded the Bronze Star Medal with a V for valor in combat in 2010 after he served in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Worthy’s most recent accolades stemmed from incidents in 2015 when he was one of three deputies who saved the victim of an arson attempt, and when he was shot at by a suspect and managed to return fire after his gun malfunctioned.

“I could not be more proud of Deputy Nick Worthy for everything he does to protect our community and his heroic life-saving actions. He is a shining example of dedication to protecting our citizens with compassion, professionalism, and courage,” Sheriff Wayne Ivey said at the time.

However, everything changed this week when Brevard County deputies executed a search warrant at the home Worthy shared with his girlfriend, Rachel Trexler, and their 2-year-old daughter. The Miami Herald reported that neighbors called 911 and said they heard gunshots and a woman screaming on Wednesday night, and when police were unable to contact anyone in the home, they obtained a search warrant and entered the residence at 6 a.m. on Thursday.

Worthy and Trexler were both arrested on charges of child neglect, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Their two-year-old daughter is in the custody of Child Protective Services, and their three dogs were taken by Animal Services.

Sheriff Ivey described Worthy in a very different tone as he revealed the ghastly conditions of his home during a press conference. In addition to finding shell casings on the floor and bullet holes in the walls of the house that were consistent with the reported gunshots, deputies found a horrific environment that included a mess of garbage, dog feces, cocaine, sex toys, guns, and ammunition.

“What was found inside was absolutely disgusting, absolutely deplorable, and quite frankly, just unbelievable. After everything we have found and everything we have seen, there is absolutely no other way to describe this except extremely disgusting,” Ivey said. “The house was in complete disarray. There was dog feces all over the house. There were firearms, ammunition, other types of trash, litter, food.”

Ivey emphasized the fact that Worthy was immediately arrested, and was not given any special treatment because of his status as a highly-decorated sheriff’s deputy. He has also been fired from the department.

“The one thing I can tell you about that home is that it was absolutely disgusting … conditions that no one should live in, especially not someone that has a profession such as ours, and certainly, with absolute conviction, not someone that has a small child exposed to that type of environment,” Ivey said.

“The trillions of dollars Americans now owe for wars that have failed to achieve their stated goals — making the world safe for democracy and stopping threats like communism and terrorism — pale in comparison to the natural consequence of a society glorifying military violence: A parade akin to the rituals performed by the very countries and ideologies the U.S. claims to keep the world safe from.”

Every time a mass shooting rocks the United States, Americans demand their government do something. Whether it’s confiscating guns, arming teachers, or turning schools into prisons, neither politicians or the public can agree upon a solution to the ongoing violence, but they know their government should act.

With last month’s Valentine’s Day shooting in Parkland, Florida, most Americans are consumed with outrage targeted at guns, and conversely, those who want to ban guns. They have largely forgotten about the massive celebration of gun violence — and worse — that their president is planning one in the capital city for later this year.

Last week, the budget details of President Trump’s proposed military parade revealed a cost of between $10 million and $30 million. This is the same military that has, for decades, been abusing, raping, and killing civilians in countries around the world. It’s the same military that fails to adequately punish such egregious offenses. It’s the same military that has inadvertently created breeding grounds for more radicalism that eventually produces further violence, both in the countries the U.S. attacks and on U.S. soil.

Yet as the military repeatedly commits these acts, the public that funds it is not outraged. Rather, they’re outraged that some professional football players choose not to bow to symbols of this violence. They celebrate films that glorify this institution. Even the film industry, which half the country condemns as a hive of liberal scum and villainy, goes out of its way to glorify this militarism, often working directly with the Pentagon to sanitize the empire’s image.

State violence is routinely exalted in American society, whether in the form of brutality from police officers or the heroism of soldiers who excel at murder. But no one can figure out why America is a violent country.

The gruesome nature of war, the military’s chief responsibility, is out of sight, out of mind, leaving us only with grandiose ceremonies celebrating their propagandized honor — like Trump’s impending military parade.

While some may balk at the cost of Trump’s show of worship for the military, however, the actual costs are far greater. The trillions of dollars Americans now owe for wars that have failed to achieve their stated goals — making the world safe for democracy and stopping threats like communism and terrorism — pale in comparison to the natural consequence of a society glorifying military violence: A parade akin to the rituals performed by the very countries and ideologies the U.S. claims to keep the world safe from.